Summer School, Part I

I've been lucky enough to teach a semester-long high school film class for the last four years, and next year I'll be lucky enough to start teaching a second semester. That means a big part of my "job" this summer is to watch scads of movies -- not a bad gig.

The new class will focus on six directors, and we'll be watching three films from each director, looking for a unity of theme and style within each director's body of work. Essentially, that mean's we'll be applying the auteur theory throughout the semester. However, I also plan to talk about the limits of the auteur theory -- I don't want to leave students with the notion that all of a director's films are the same, and that there's always a coherent and logical progression throughout a career. I'm envisioning the class as a series of snapshots -- here's this director early in his career, here he is later -- what's the same? What's changed? Like snapshots, these films might or might not be representative of the dominant theme or style a director has employed throughout his career. I'm sure there are pictures of Lindsay Lohan somewhere in which she doesn't look coked up, for example.

Speaking of Lindsay, she starred in Robert Altman's last film, A Prairie Home Companion, one of many of Altman's films that employs a large, ensemble cast. This is the first thing many people think of when they think of Altman, but earlier in his career Altman spent most of his time deconstructing genres in films with smaller casts, like McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, and Thieves Like Us.

Anyway.

So I've been thinking about which Hitchcock films to use with my class. Two of them are gimmes (for me, anyway) -- Rear Window and Vertigo. They're acknowledged masterpieces, plus I taught them in the existing class for four years, so I'll be on some solid ground when I'm starting out. Both employ the same lead actor (Jimmy Stewart) as a physically and/or psychologically wounded protagonist who can no longer work at his action-filled job, and ends up filling his time by spying on people. A lot of subjective point-of-view shots and long, voyeuristic sequences without dialogue ensue. Eventually, the female protagonist puts herself in danger in order to please the man -- results vary. None of Hitchcock's other films are as similar to these two as these two are to each other, but that's OK (Notorious and Psycho probably come closest). It frees me up to pick a snapshot from earlier in his career, his often-overlooked British period. I'm thinking of going with The 39 Steps, a 1935 gem that is the best early example of his "wrong man" films, movies in which a man is picked seemingly at random and accused of a crime he didn't commit, and a double-chase ensues -- the police and/or bad guys after the wrong man, and the wrong man after the truth to clear his name. It's very different than Rear Window and Vertigo, but the more I think (and read) about it, the more I think that's OK. There's still enough there to connect the dots from 1935 to '54 and '58 (critical looks at male/female relationships, the woman risking herself for the man, telling stories with images, ineffectuality or oppressiveness of police, etc.), and I think the students will benefit from seeing a different-looking snapshot. It's as important to look at the differences between a director's films as it is the similarities.

The Bastard-in-Chief

The guy pictured in the center used to be the editor-in-chief of The Minnesota Daily, one of the best college newspapers in the country; he composes the frequently hilarious Red Hot Shop prose for target.com; he's the commissioner of our fantasy football league, and yet, despite this pedigree and these time constraints, he still finds time to Photoshop his head on to the body of an even bigger jackass for the purpose of a fantasy football league "news" story.

It should come as no surprise, then, that he is also the tournament director for an annual golf get-together known as The Bastards (sounds kinda like The Masters, get it?). The event, in its seventh year, entails a bunch of the Bastard-in-Chief's friends descending upon a local golf course for two-man, best-ball scramble. Heckling, drunkenness, and witty T-shirts ensue (this year's slogan was taken from Anchorman: "We've been coming to the same party for seven years. And in no way is that depressing"). This year marked just my fourth appearance in The Bastards, and for the third time my playing partner was the proprietor of this blog. Somehow, we actually won this event a few years ago -- it remains infamous because Rand wore black soccer shoes, while the rest of the competitors dressed, well, less Ragstock-y. Our chief prize for the victory was a pair of red smoking jackets. If you know anything about The Masters, that's funny. Unlike The Masters, however, we had to give the jackets back when we didn't win the following year.

Anyway, this year we got our asses handed to us because, as it turns out, neither Rand nor I can hit an iron. Whenever one of us would start to go down the drain by hitting another execrable approach shot, the other would be swirling right behind him by hitting something even worse. In the end, one of the highlights of the day would turn out to be listening to a loud, profane tirade against NBC golf commentator Jimmy Roberts while we were watching the U.S. Open in the clubhouse after our round. One of our opponents took great offense to Roberts' penchant for melodramatic human interest stories, calling him a "syrupy motherfucker." He continued to torture this metaphor with references to waffles, pancakes and, for some reason, pizza. Watching the final round of the U.S. Open on Sunday, I had to agree with this assessment of Roberts, who I will now call Jemimah Roberts. Toward the end of the round, Roberts did a kind of on-air essay, pontificating on the career of leader Angel Cabrera. Apparently, his nickname is "The Duck," leading to Roberts using the cliche -- not once, but twice -- "water off a duck's back" to describe how the portly, chain-smoking Argentine was shrugging off the pressure of leading the final round of a major.

Cabrera, of course, went on to hold off Tiger Woods and Jim Furyk to win the U.S. Open. It was hilarious to see him smoking as he walked (waddled) down every fairway to try to calm himself down, while behind him, Tiger, whose biceps kick the hell out of his red Nike shirts, couldn't make up ground. In addition to the money, fame, and trophy Cabrera received, he also deserves a red smoking jacket.